When travel guide 'Lonely Planet', published its latest edition in June, a raw nerve was touched as Coventry was given the concrete city treatment with the words: ‘planners filled in the gaps with dull concrete developments’.
BBC Coventry & Warwickshire radio was quick to look for comment from the Coventry Society and none other than vice-chairman Paul Maddocks was invited to climb to the top of the Old Cathedral Tower where presenter Annie Othen was there to interview him.
Surveying the scene below, they looked for all the dull concrete developments. Clearly the post-war precincts should have been a contender but here all the buildings are faced with pleasant brick. And the tower blocks? ‘Not an easy thing to build that high in brick alone,’ said Paul. ‘Concrete was a relatively new building material and towns and cities around the world have been using it. And if the ring road had been constructed in brick we would have had continuous arches just like the structures put up for Victorian railways.’ Paul went on to say that we should not take the Lonely Planet to seriously when in its early days its contributors were hippy type hitch hikers who produced a guide highlighting cheap places to stay in Asia, the best bars, and it was full of snide remarks. Not really the usual tour guide giving historical places of interest to visit.Paul said: 'it's a shame that when the BBC world wide publishing owned the Lonely Planet they had not corrected this misinformation before selling the company in March this year.'
Annie also read out that the Lonely Planet had said ...'must see are the outstanding motoring museum (especially if you have kids in tow)’. Paul was much happier with this explaining that he had worked there for over 30 years as the exhibitions designer, part of the management team.Annie also interviewed Liz Ludgate from the cathedral who was surprised to see how green Coventry looks with so many trees dotted everywhere.
The full quote in the Lonely Planet is...Coventry.Dominated today by its twin spires and identikit tower blocks. Coventry was once a bustling hub for the production of cloth, clocks, bicycles, automobiles and munitions. It was this industry that drew the German Luftwaffe in WW2 on the night of November 1940, the city was badly blitzed that the Nazis coined a new verb 'Coventrated' meaning to flatten. Post war planners filled in the gaps with dull concrete developments, and the city faced a further set back with the collapse of the British motor industry in the 1980's.A handful of medieval streets escaped the bombers, offering a taste of old Coventry.
Must see are the outstanding motoring museum (especially if you have kids in tow) and the dramatic modernist cathedral rising alongside the sublime ruins of its bombed-out predecessor.
Further information about Lonely Planet:Set up by Tony Weller when him and his wife Maureen travelled from England to Australia overland as part of their honeymoon, 40 years ago. Tony published 'Across Asia on the cheap' it got a lot of interest from other hitch hikers and the main questions were 'where to stay cheap' 'what to eat' & 'how not to get sick'. So with down to earth comments and cheap sarcastic jokes it became the 'Lonely Planet' and it was very popular. The company was bought by the BBC Worldwide in 2007 for £130 million and sold it in March 2013 to American billionaire Brad Kelley for £51.5 million (nearly £80 million loss).